What should be the consequences for a cop who makes this kind of honest mistake? Reprimanded? Fired? Jail? Civil liability?
If you don’t think the current standard is the right one, you need to be able to describe how some standard of your own is better. Be specific.
Regards,
Shodan
Jail. Make an example of them for the next cop who is inclined to shoot first and ask questions later.
Start with screening and training to help officers avoid making these “mistakes”.
Do you feel that there should be no consequences for an officer who made a “mistake”, and then lied to cover it up?
How about officers who plant evidence on people, is that just a mistake?
Is it okay for a cop to terrorize a pizza place, if their pizza is late?
Eight members of Baltimore’s Gun Trace Task Force revealed that a “handful” of the police officers reportedly carried fake guns in their patrol cars to plant on innocent people in case the cops mistakenly shot unarmed suspects.
Detective Maurice Ward, who’s already pleaded guilty to corruption charges, testified that he and his partners were told to carry the replicas and BB guns “in case we accidentally hit somebody or got into a shootout, so we could plant them.” The directive allegedly came from the team’s sergeant, Wayne Jenkins, the Washington Post reports. Though Ward didn’t say whether or not the tactic was ever used, Detective Marcus Taylor—another cop swept up in the scandal—was carrying a fake gun almost identical to his service weapon when he was arrested last year, according to the Sun.
But the BB gun testimony is particularly disturbing in light of 12-year-old Tamir Rice’s death in 2014, the 13-year-old in Baltimore who was shot twice by cops in 2016 after he allegedly sprinted from them with a replica gun in his hand, and the 86 people fatally shot by police in 2015 and 2016 who were spotted carrying toy guns.
The task force was originally created to confiscate guns, but besides carrying and planting fake guns on unarmed suspects, other reported crimes include robbing suspects and innocent people, raiding homes without warrants, and selling confiscated drugs.
If pizza place managers don’t want to get roughed up by the police, then they should ensure that pizzas to the police are delivered on time. See how easy that is? :rolleyes:
I’m sure this is an isolated occurrence, limited solely to the Baltimore police department. And solely to those few officers. Nothing that would be wide spread throughout police forces in the country.
If they don’t want to get shot by the police, then they shouldn’t let the police plant replica guns on their dead bodies.
You can have my fake gun when you pry it out of the cold, dead hands of the guy I accidentally shot.
I would think that a reasonable police officer shoots another person because of a credible threat, not because there was no reason not to see a threat.
Killing someone for carrying a cellphone or a keyring is literally a shoot first and ask questions later situation, and we, as a society, cannot tolerate that.
We do that already. What kind of training do you recommend so that police never make any mistakes? What should be the consequence if they do?
Regards,
Shodan
Don’t forget the complaints that everyday applications by cops of these standards have the slight whiff of… well, racism.
You keep calling all these events mere “mistakes”. Spelling a name wrong on the report is a mistake. Twenty shots at someone who is in his mother’s backyard while talking on a cell phone, trying to claim that said cellphone looked like a crowbar, then changing their story to say it looked like a dangerous weapon is both a coverup and a major fuck-up.
Oh, c’mon, hardly anybody walks around with a cellphone or car keys in their hand. It would be much more likely for someone to have a gun in their hand. Right?
What would be the consequences be if I emptied a gun into a police officer, then claimed it was too dark to identify him and the radio he was carrying looked like a gun?
How about testing for PEDs? A friend who is a cop has told me that all the young guys on the force where he works are into weightlifting and they all use testosterone/anabolic steroids. They are all bulked up, have acne, and have horrible tempers.
what would the consequences be if someone in any other line of work caused the death of another? at a minimum there would be a reassessment of their fitness to perform the duties required. there might be some changes to policy and procedure to prevent future deaths. There may be civil and criminal liability to the company in terms of fines and compensation; and depending on the egregiousness of the error, the person might be civil and criminally liable as well.
There are already all kinds of rules and procedures in place to address situations like this in almost every line of work - including the military - why should the police force be any different?
step 1: admit that something went wrong
step 2: openly and honestly discuss the culpability of everyone involved
step 3: openly and honestly discuss the consequences the “offending” officer will receive (perfectly justified with no consequences is NOT ACCEPTABLE when a death occurs}
step 4: openly and honestly discuss what steps are being taken to prevent the situation from occurring again.
step 5: follow up with the public
when you have human beings interacting there will be unfortunate occurrences, and when you add weapons to the mix those occurrences can turn deadly.
The mindset that what the cops do automatically justifies* how* they do it should never have been acceptable in the first place. Their powers stem from the permission of we the people, and we have given them permission to use force (sometimes deadly) to do their jobs, but that permission is not unqualified and does not excuse their actions from our scrutiny and our expectations.
mc
We do a very poor job of it. Police departments do not check references or past employment history. They do not provide training in de-escalation, but rather in just shooting anytime they feel scared.
I never said anything about making no mistakes, I would like to see them make fewer. And there are many actions that police officers take that are not a mistake, but are done with the full knowledge that they are in the wrong, but that they will be backed by their boys in blue and by idiots like you.
The consequences should depend on the circumstances. The vast majority of police who shoot an unarmed person should be fired. They have shown that they do not have the capacity to handle the job. Their screening and training should be reviewed to see where they were lacking in allowing them to make this mistake to prevent this from happening again.
When cops make more than just “a mistake”, when they plant evidence, or harass citizens, or lie to cover up a mistake, then they should start facing prosecution and possible jail time.
What kind of training do you think that citizens should be required to have to ensure having safe interactions with cops to decrease the likelihood of them making a “mistake” that you pay for?
If a citizen makes a mistake, and accidently kills a police officer, what should be the consequences?
There have been so many hundreds of cases of police abusing or killing I can’t keep track of the names, but let me ask you about these cases I do remember:
(1) A teen-age girl was thrown to the ground for the “crime” of riding a bicycle in a parking lot. Is it reasonable to assume that a kid so criminal as to ride their bicycle is on the verge of murder?
(2) What about the motorists asked to reach for their drivers’ licenses who then reached for their licenses and were killed for it? Is “show me your license” a trick question, and the motorist expected to show he’s a law-abiding citizen by saying “I’m afraid I can’t do that, officer”?
(3) What about the motorist who announced he had a gun with a permit and was then almost immediately shot? Is it the motorist’s own fault for being so uppity as to imagine the 2nd Amendment applies to black men?
(4) What about presumably innocent motorists shot while driving away from the officer? Did the officer have a “reasonable fear” that the car had a warp-drive feature and would suddenly change to a new position and direction?
And please answer this one for us:
(5) You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t, not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that?
The police aren’t different, except insofar as the fact that, very occasionally, they do need to shoot people as part of their job.
At which point you step away from reality. The large majority of the time, when the police shoot someone, it is perfectly justified and there should be no consequences.
‘You did your job right, what you did was justified, and we are going to punish you for it’ is insane.
Regards,
Shodan